ND Curriculum Initiative

Subject & Standards

Physical Education: 2. Structure and Function: 3. Subject Matter, Themes, Symbols and Ideas in Viasual Art:

Needs Assessment/Rational

Standardized testing shows that our 1st graders scored 61% in Geometry and Spatial Sense and 65% in Number and Number Relations. The goal of this unit is to help increase those scores. Because the flag is the most recognized symbol of the United States and the students see it every day in their school and community it lends itself well to the study of shapes, patterns, and number relations.

Understandings & Goals

Enduring Understanding:1. The flag is an important symbol representing the United States and that it is made up of red, white, and blue shapes.
Goal(s):Students will recognize the flag as a symbol of the United States.

Questions Answered

Essential questions: 1. What country do we live in? 2. What is a flag? 3. What does the flag represent or what does it make people think of? 4. What colors are on the U.S. flag? 5. What shapes are on the U. S. flag? 6. How do you know that this the flag of the United States?
Objectives: 1. Students will be able to recite the Pledge of Allegiance with 100% accuracy. 2. Students will point to and name the shapes incorporated in the U.S. flag with 100% accuracy. 3. Students will point to and say the AB pattern of the stripes in the U.S. flag with 100% accuracy. 4. Students will show one-to-one correspondence when counting the stripes of the flag with 100% accuracy. 5. Students will accurately reproduce a flag, demonstrating their knowledge of the parts of the flag with 90% accuracy.

Assessment

What quiz and test items (e.g. simple content-focused questions that require a single, best answer) will provide evidence of understanding?
Students will be asked questions about the flag and make art projects of the flag.
What academic prompts (e.g. open-ended questions or problems that require students to think critically and then to prepare a response / product / performance) will provide evidence of understanding? Students will take part in group discussions, group art projects, a postcard exchange with Kindergartens around the country, complete individual art projects, and computer projects.
What performance tasks and projects (e.g. complex challenges that are authentic, mirror the real world and require a performance or product) will you include that will provide evidence of student understanding?
1. The class will produce a chain link replica of the U.S. flag. 2. Individuals will make pages for a book based on the poem “Rectangle, rectangle what do you see?”  3. Individuals will paint a picture of the flag using puffy paint. 4. Individuals will recite the Pledge of Allegiance. 5. Individuals will recite the song “50 Stars Are on Our Flag”.  6. Individuals will recite the poem and do the American Sign Language for the poem “Red, White, and Blue”.  7. Students will learn the songs “This Land is Your Land” and “God Bless America” using picture books and CD’s.
What other evidence (e.g. observations, work samples, dialogues, student self-assessment) of understanding will you collect?
1. A chain link replica of the U.S. flag made by the group will be displayed in the classroom. 2. Completed computer made paintings of the flag.

Instructional Strategies

1. Students will take part in a teacher lead discussion about the picture book “I Pledge Allegiance”, explaining what is happening in each picture or what the picture represents. 2. After watching the video “George Learns the Pledge of Allegiance”,  students will participate in a teacher lead discussion and answer questions about what George learned about the flag, the history of the United States and what it means to be a good citizen.3. Students will be able to independently use the Kid Pix program to accurately draw, paint, and print a U.S. flag. 4. Students will create pages for individual flag books. They will make a pattern with whites stripes, a pattern with red stripes, show correct placement of a small blue rectangle, and correctly color an American flag.